Mar 1, 2014

FLIGHT WITH EGRETS

FLIGHT WITH EGRETS

Khaliqur Rahman

It is raining outside. I look out of
the window. I see the wet green of the tree and many white dabs on the green
and the peeping grey-blue spots of the sky through the green as well. It has
stopped raining. But life on the tree is still and motionless. Maybe there’s a
puff of breeze, now and then, and the green sways a bit to the right then it sways
back, again it moves to the right, and again it comes back, now it sways to the
left a bit. This little dance to the tune of the breeze is in keeping with the
puffs of breeze. With this the blue peeks of the sky also choose to peep
through different peep-holes. Some of the white dabs take to wings only to take
the shortest of short flights to perch beside another white dab still unmoved.
These white dabs are, in fact, egrets which we call bagula. Again I see some of them take a short flight to come back
and sit either alone or by the side of another egret.

My mind takes a flight.

How peaceful is the life of birds!
Why birds alone, why not the life of all the animals? And trees? The entire
animal kingdom and the plant kingdom are peacefully and beautifully organized.
And mind you, these kingdoms conduct themselves so well even without kings or
governments. They follow the rule of life from Nature so well. And, when they
do that they do not need countless support of numberless institutions that the
so called superior species, the homo-sapiens, now so helplessly need.

Let’s have a look at the support
systems the human beings need. Can they live without medical system? They
can’t, because they’ve lost on the way, how to live naturally and die
naturally, like the birds and other animals, and of course, the trees and
plants.

While the other life-forms live
naturally, they don’t need clothes. Their natural clothing: skin, hide,
feather, fur for animals and birds and bark for trees, is all they have and all
they need to protect their bodies in all weathers. In contrast, Man needs
clothing and different clothing for changing seasons and different places. In
addition, Man needs clothes not only for just needs but also for luxury and
fashion. Perhaps the most basic requirement for Man besides these improved
modifications of human-attire, was the primordial fig leaf to hide shame,
unlike the other life-forms.

I suspect, when Man found fig leaf to
‘hide’, both Adam and Eve, learnt their primary lessons in hypocrisy.

The wisest among the wise men, then,
must have thought of fortifying the grains of honesty by introducing religion
and the religious laws. But alas! The clever men (and women) have always found
ways and means to dodge these rules.

Like the system of religion, over
historical periods of time, different sets of wise men must have come with
similar support systems, like education, medicine, judiciary, governance,
architecture and so on.

Within the system of religion, they
must have thought of the institution of marriage and within the system of
education they must have thought of economics and consequently money and
property. Thus must have come into existence the concepts of relationships like
husband and wife, mother and father and families. Thus must have come into
existence the concept of ownership of money and land. Other institutions, in
the same way, must have taken shape and thus they must have come to stay.

Man, thus, had, and still has, to
follow two sets of rules: the rule of life and the rule of law. The rule of law
includes all laws, like religious laws, judicial laws, social and cultural
laws, conventions and traditions. Compared to Man, other life-forms are perhaps
better off; they have to follow only one set of rules: the rule of life,
whereas Man has to live and struggle under the tension between the rule of life
and the rule of law. In the process, hasn’t Man denaturalized himself and
euphemistically uses the words ‘civilization’ or even ‘sophistication’ for
denaturalization?

Man, like a river, needs embankments
of strong sets of discipline, to become human and even super human, just as a
river does to become ‘sea’.

Stagnated water, on the other hand,
struggles to break free and in process, makes a few mischievous let outs,
eroding the rocks and leaking through the crevices. Confused human mind,
similarly, craves for freedoms that invariably lead to erosion of values set up
through rules of law.

When I hit the solid earth after this
flight with the egrets, I wholeheartedly adore the egrets: they don’t smoke,
they don’t drink, they don’t ‘hide’ and they don’t lie!